When there's these hearts and lives and they're yours to guide, you stop asking "What do you want to be when you grow up", but rather "Who do you want to be?"  For you don't make your way through this world by an occupation, but by the very character of your being.

The Young Botanist 1888-1890

I've found that when you're spending your days doing the mundane like smoothing fresh bedsheets for the ones you do life with, time ticks on while the mind ticks back taking you straight to eighteen where the lines of identity were crazy blurred.

Nap Time 1889

In the morning hours, I sneak away to read words and tap out ideas. Rarely do the words stick like the ones from this past week.  It was premised that "belonging is not rooted in concepts of democratic citizenship, but in consumerism" (Stack & Kelly, 2006, p.7) with democratic citizenship being the ability to discuss, think and question, and consumerism being how we frivolously fill our lives.  To find belonging due to what one has, instead of due to who one is. There's a battle to be fought.

The Meadow Lark 1887

  

Who inspires?  

Who loves well? 

Who lives well?

Who surprises you with beauty?

The Spinner 1888

We attempt to define a person, 

the most commonplace person we know, 

but he will not submit to bounds; 

some unexpected beauty of nature breaks out; 

we find he is not what we thought, 

and begin to suspect that every person 

exceeds our power of measurement. 

~ Charlotte Mason

* All art by Canadian artist Paul Peel

Stack, M. & Kelly, M. D. (2006). Popular media, education and resistance, Canadian Journal of Education, 29(1), pp. 5-26